—­The young girl’s eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into her face with her heart’s blood, she bent over and kissed him.  It was the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.  The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him shed.

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head and was still.  All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his memory.  The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his fellow-creature’s fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.  He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent.  The kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.  Shall I pray with you?—­he said, after a pause.  A little before he would have said, Shall I pray for you?—­The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, is full of sentiment.  So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.

Pray!—­said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones,

Iris and the Little Gentleman that God would look on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that He would remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that He would deal gently with the bruised reed.  Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their child.  Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own transgressions!  Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is tempted!  Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy!  If his eyes are not opened to all Thy truth, let Thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of tenderness.  In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a proselyte of him.